In the overwhelmingly massive world of blogs, it seems that posting often is widely viewed as the most important aspect of increasing and/or maintaining readership. I would imagine that in today’s world of distractions, keeping the interest level up is no easy feat, given the wondrous assortment of mind numbing, easily-accessed crap out there. If I want, I can get all of the useless information I need in nice, crack-sized bites of flashing light and breathless commentary on shows like Entertainment Tonight (which has almost surpassed crack to become the crystal meth of reporting), or through a few quick clicks of the mouse around Google News. It’s also tough to compete with the written word against the oh, probably six million videos on YouTube of some dude getting hit in the genitals with some type of ball/hockey stick/golf club/bat/car/apartment building, or fuzzy domestic animal. I mean, honestly, that’s usually where I end up when I should be posting. So why the hell would anyone be interested in checking out our mind numbingly easily-accessed crap? Turns out, they’re not! Pretty much nobody comes back, and these things are basically like sending out a seasonal form letter to family members, the exception being that those usually aren’t insecurity-driven.
It just so happens that all the real action is happening in the comments section! Why do all the freakin’ work of posting something when commenting on other’s work is infinitely more life affirming? It is also easier, more fun, and a lot less soul-baring. Commenting comes in nice, easily digestible chunks, and you always finish with that George Costanza “You’ve been great! I’m outta here!” leave-on-a-high-note feeling. A commenter isn’t expected to maintain interest much past a Twitter-like sentence or two, which is perfect for me. I like to serve up my smarmalade covered chunks of wisdom toast in quick bites, which seems odd considering I am the universally acknowledged master of the run on sentence. With commenting, you are also playing to a built-in audience, that being the six four one to two other bloggers that read your blog and bother to leave a comment. In this way, you get to feel like a part of something. As an example, I commented on a post from one of the blogs in my Blog List one time. In their response they called me “Random Commenter Guy” instead of my screen name in my comment (RBG). Now if getting your own nickname right off the bat isn’t special, I don’t know what is! I could definitely feel the love. It’s a real family environment around here, very similar to an Amish community just off the side of the highway that no one has any idea is even there.
Well, better get going. I see some new posts have popped up in my Blog List, and they’re probably dying to know what I think. I can always post tomorrow, right?
